


Red Angels

by Digs



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Aesthetic Theory, F/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:40:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Digs/pseuds/Digs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It can be better not to stain a wordless thing with too much talk.”</p><p>Abigail goes over to Hannibal’s for the weekend. Set after Trou Normand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Angels

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning information: In this story, Hannibal and Abigail do not sleep together, but his canonical emotional manipulation takes on a pronounced sexual edge. If older male characters sexualizing their authority over young women is a concern for you, please proceed with care.
> 
> If you’d like to watch part of the ballet that they go to, you can see clips [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM60V3oTfF4) and [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyhYkHfCfBM). I fudged it a bit because the real piece is too short to be the only thing on a night’s program.

Even the noises his car made seemed expensive, but she wasn’t going to ask him about it and sound like some hick.

“It’s nice of you to let me come over,” she said awkwardly, glancing at him as they pulled away from the hospital.

“Doctor Bloom and I agreed that it might be helpful to you to have a vacation, of sorts, from therapy.”

She snorted. “It’s not like I do anything there. I’m pretty much on an endless vacation.”

“A vacation from what?” he asked.

“From my life. My—real life.” She faltered. “The one I was supposed to have.”

“In therapy, you are asked to work through your past in the service of your future. But if you wander too long in the halls of memory, you can forget that the world of the present is already open to you.”

They stopped at a red light next to a park, with kids clambering on a play structure and some guys scuffling over a soccer ball. The sun poured down, gold on the green field.

       –

When they got to his house, he opened the car door for her, shouldering her backpack as though there were nothing ridiculous about a man in a three-piece suit toting a dirty nylon Jansport.

“Unfortunately, I have work to attend to, so I must leave you to your own devices this afternoon. But first, come, I will show you the house.”

She’d seen the dining room already, of course, and the kitchen, but the tour went on: the music room, the living room, the library; upstairs, the guest rooms, and a nod to his bedroom down the hall. Their footsteps were nearly silent on the deep carpets.

Her room at the hospital was aggressively inoffensive, swaddling her in wimpy pastels and little florals. And there was a constant static of noise: shuffling footsteps and squeaky carts trudging up and down the halls, interrupted by the plaintive whines and yelps. Hannibal’s house made the hospital seem like a pale and sniveling purgatory. Everything seemed heavier than normal, somehow. Heavy with color, with texture, with a kind of absolute certainty that she recognized as one part money and two parts … whatever it was, about Hannibal, that made him like that.

“Please, make yourself at home. We will eat a little early; we have tickets to a performance tonight. Come down for dinner at six.”

She nodded, stifling a full-body yawn.

He smiled at her. “Or perhaps I will need to come and wake you. Go. Take a rest. Your nightmares will not follow you here.”

       –

Her room was big and lavish, though not as overwhelming as some of the house, done in deep slate blue and textured black with gleams of silver. In the adjoining bathroom, a set of thickly-piled towels waited on the counter with an array of elegant bottles from brands she didn’t recognize.

Abigail looked at herself in the mirror—face pale against the black stone—and unwound the scarf from her neck. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, imagining what she would tell people about the scar, in some glamorous future where she spent all her time in rooms like these, where nobody knew her. Where she wouldn’t have to say _my father was a murderer._ But how do you explain a knife scar across your throat? She practiced staring them down, these gossipy future ghosts. _My story is no concern of yours._

But once the book came out, everyone would always know. She turned away from the mirror and started the water in the shower running as hot as she could stand, tossing her clothes on the floor, and distracted herself by trying out each of Hannibal’s exotic soaps.

Once she’d scrubbed every molecule of hospital smell off her skin, she half-dressed again and climbed into bed, luxuriating in the feeling of privacy as much as the silky sheets. It had been a long time since she’d had whole hours in the middle of the day free from doctor’s orders or clumsy attempts to talk about her feelings. The shower had left her clean and loose-limbed, and for once she felt safe, as though the thick, heavy walls of her room could keep out the future as well as the street noise.

She ran a hand down across her stomach experimentally, slipping it under her panties, feeling more alive in her body than she had in weeks. Warmth pooled between her legs as she touched herself, slowly at first, mentally flipping through crushes and fantasies. But her usual thoughts all seemed to slip away from her. Guys from school had wavering, half-forgotten faces; movie star glamor seemed thin and pointless. A whiff from the still-steamy bathroom reminded her of something—it must have been one of the products Hannibal used—and Abigail thought of the way he’d held her, after her confession, close and steady and unflinching, one hand stroking her hair. She closed her eyes and imagined his other hand, low on her back, pressing their hips together—the pace of her fingers speeding up—his voice saying _Abigail_ —and she came, in a low, rolling wave that left her shuddering for breath.

As it passed away from her, she felt at last the full weight of her exhaustion, and slipped away into a deep and welcoming dark.

       –

When Hannibal knocked at her door, she had no idea how much time had passed. “Abigail?” he asked through the door, his voice brisk but gentle. “Dinner is ready.”

Her answer sounded groggier than she meant it to. “Ten more minutes?”

“But we should not be late. And if I go, you will fall asleep again. Morpheus does not release his own so easily.”

She sighed and flopped over, trying to shake off the heavy fog of sleep, realizing belatedly that her underwear was still around her ankles, her bra and pants on the bathroom floor. Her fingers and thighs still slick, heady with the smell of sex.

“Alright, just a sec,” she called, grabbing a tissue from the bedside table and wiping herself hastily. She shimmied back into her clothes, finger-combing her hair, and opened the door to see Hannibal waiting for her, expression mild.

“Morpheus?” she asked, a little tartly, pushing her luck to cover up the flush in her cheeks. “Do you have a literary reference for everything?”

He seemed amused instead of offended. “Not at all. So many times I find no story that speaks to my life, it is a pleasure to share it when I find one.”

She rubbed her eyes and stretched, reaching her arms up and wiggling. “I’m—starving. What’s for dinner?”

“Come eat it, and you will see,” he said, urging her before him with a touch at the small of her back.

Dinner was a fragrant chicken stew with briny olives and sweet dried apricot, a Moroccan tagine, he said, ladled over steaming, fluffy couscous. She helped herself to little spoonfuls of the condiments he’d laid out, as he explained them: preserved lemon, spicy harissa, fresh cilantro, sliced toasted almonds for crunch.

“I’ve never had this before, it’s really good. Thank you.” Her mother had been the one for manners.

“I am glad to hear it. You have lost weight, these last months. I worry, Abigail.”

She looked away. “After—everything, I have trouble with food sometimes. A lot of the time.”

“I could prepare you something vegetarian, if you prefer.”

“No, it’s okay, I don’t—want to be afraid of meat. It’s just hard. And the hospital food sucks,” she said, twisting a smile.

“Perhaps you might like to help me prepare our dinner tomorrow night.”

“Oh, I’m … I’m not a gourmet cook or anything, I didn’t used to cook, at home. Just cereal.”

“All the more reason,” he said. “Being able to cook for yourself is a way of being independent, and taking control of your own body. I will show you.”

She looked for a way to change the subject. “What are we going to see tonight?”

“The New York City Ballet has come to the Lyric for the weekend to dance a piece called _Red Angels._ It seemed a shame to miss the chance to introduce you to their repertory.”

“Ballet?” she said, crinkling her nose.

“Do not be so skeptical, little bird. Dance is among the most elemental art forms. To take our very potential for motion, and to master it, there is a basic joy in that. You will see.”

He cut a delicate slice of his chicken. “I find that many of the arts that concern the body are ill understood. Perfume, for example. The sense of smell is an ancient evolutionary inheritance, too old to fall wholly within the grip of language, attuned only to the things which are important to us. Food; smoke; the scents of dirt and rain and flowers.”

“And,” he continued, “more than any of those, it is keen for the sensuous and rich smells of the body, which intimately reveal us to one another.” His gaze flicked over her, perfectly innocent. “Smells have no true names, and they move us in nameless ways.”

She flushed all over. “And cooking,” she said after a moment, lifting her face to him, raising an eyebrow. “Another underappreciated genre?”

He tipped his glass to her. “Without our bodies there would be no art.”

       –

Abigail kept stumbling when he opened doors for her, somehow unable to get used to it. He helped her off with her coat at the coat check with the same unruffled formality he brought to everything, not even seeming to notice her awkwardness. Their seats were very good. They settled in with their programs.

“The score is a piece called ‘Maxwell’s Demon,’ by Richard Einhorn. Do you know the reference?”

“Isn’t that—physics? Something about heat?”

“Very good. A famous thought experiment. The mathematician Maxwell imagined an invisible being that could take a chamber of gas and sort cold particles from warm. Heating one side, chilling the other. It would be a way of cheating entropy.”

“But you can’t go backwards like that, really.”

“That is why we make art, Abigail. To defy death, for a little while.”

The lights went down, and quiet fell. He leaned over to speak lowly into her ear; she could feel the warmth of his breath.

“Watch how the dancers move. The phrases of their motion are independent, yet they may also dance together.”

She didn’t know what she was expecting, something with tutus and frills and girly twirling, but the curtain rose on a bare stage with a burning red backdrop. If it had been quiet before, the silence now was like a hungry animal, huge and focused.

The sound that broke the silence was not music at all but a commanding drumbeat, and two dancers paced in, all dressed in red. As they began to dance, the music roared to life, thrumming like a live wire, some instrument she’d never heard that put her in mind of the screaming energy of a punk band.

There was nothing girly about it. Even when the female dancer was in the man’s arms she was full of coiled, unforgiving force. They had a way of moving through their hips that for a moment would seem obscene, but just as quickly slid back into flawless, asexual control. Nothing mechanical about it—they moved with a furious, explosive energy, and the music ripped through her like nothing she’d ever heard before. 

Abigail found herself holding her breath. She watched, mesmerized, as each new section spun a variation into this exhilarating whirl, finally returning to first driving theme. One by one the four dancers forced themselves through their last arguments and stood evenly upon the stage.

As the last measures juddered to an end, the dancers stalked away from the crowd. They danced a last phrase looking over their shoulders—it made her uneasy, somehow. The light deepened, transforming into half-demonic shapes against the red.

Finally the last embers of the glow died away. Applause surged into the silence. Hannibal was the first to his feet; the crowd, and Abigail, followed suit.

“What did you think?” he asked her, after the noise had died down at last, back into the humdrum rustle of normal life.

She cocked her head, looking down over the stage. “I didn’t hate it.”

“It can be better not to stain a wordless thing with too much talk,” he said agreeably, and motioned her out of the row. She glanced back at the stage and saw them again: black shapes in the burning light.

Hannibal drove them home through the dark streets. Abigail leaned against the window, idly stroking the leather armrest with her fingertips, sleepy again in the easy quiet. “You move like that,” she said, “a little bit. Did you ever used to dance?”

He smiled to himself, eyes on the road. “Americans believe that men should not concern themselves with grace. As though power and grace were not the same.”

       –

They spent the next day shopping and cooking, Hannibal talking her through the basics all the while. He had a lecture ready on any topic: selecting fresh seafood, planning the steps of a multi-course meal, when to use fresh tomatoes and when to use canned. They stopped in at a cheese shop where Hannibal talked easily with the guy behind the counter, introducing her as “my young friend.” Abigail avoided the man's curious eyes.

In the afternoon they got started on their menu—not as elaborate as Hannibal’s usual, in deference to her inexperience, but all from scratch. Tomato soup to begin; then crab cakes on soft yeast rolls, with apple-fennel slaw; custard and poached pears for dessert.

“Each of our recipes tonight contains my own adaptations and substitutions,” he said, getting out the crabs they had bought. “The traditional French mirepoix contains onions, carrots, and celery, but you are chopping only onions and carrots because I find that celery does not complement the tomatoes in this soup. In the rolls we have made, I substituted a part of potato flour for wheat, to give them a softness and a subtle flavor.” Abigail nodded, half-listening as she practiced the fine, even dice he had shown her.

“Your father hoped that substitution would appease the pain that drove him,” Hannibal said. 

Abigail froze mid-slice. Hannibal went on dismantling the crabs with a series of efficient cracks. “One cut of meat may be substituted for another in the kitchen,” he continued, “but each life is singular and cannot be traded, this one for that.”

She couldn’t move. Her chest felt tight. “So many people have died because of me,” she said, staring down at her little carrot pile.

“No,” said Hannibal, “our deaths are as singular as our lives. You are not at fault for what has happened around you. Nor can your life be held in thrall to the dead.” He snapped another crab leg, and hissed in sudden pain.

“You okay?” she asked, going over to him, the spell broken.

“A small cut only,” he said, washing the crab muck off his hands. “Even practiced chefs make mistakes.”

He spread his hand, palm up, so that she could see the blood welling along the pad of his thumb. “Art and metaphor fail us, in the end, for in the end we ourselves are not symbols, but elegant machines. It is the human gift to shape meaning around this flesh—and that meaning may be a beautiful sculpture, or it may protect us like a suit of armor. Or it may be a cage. And you must throw it off when it does not serve you.”

He grasped her shoulder with his other hand, looking into her face. “You must throw off your story about your guilt, Abigail, and begin again, with only the fact of your life. What you smell, what you taste: the singular life that you feel around you.” He brought his thumb, with its bead of bright red blood, up to her lips as she stared at him. She hesitated, then took it into her mouth.

She could feel the ridges of his fingerprint against her tongue. The sweet metallic taste of blood filled her mouth and nose. He brought his other hand up to cup her hair, and she quivered, heart racing.

“Good girl,” he said.


End file.
